AP English
Mr. Flowers
Some background notes on Heart of Darkness (for those of you who didn’t read it last year)
Heart of Darkness was published right at the start of the 20th century and is set in the Belgian Congo (then called the Congo Free—meaning free trade not free people—State) sometime during the 1890s. The 1890’s—and, in fact, the whole of the late 19th century and very early 20th century—was the apex of European colonialism both in Africa andaround the world. The English controlled China, India, Australia, Canada and major portions of Africa (the so-called ‘dark continent’)including much of eastern Africa, southern Africa (think both South Africa and the present-day Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia), Egypt and some of western Africa; the French controlled some of southeast Asia (Vietnam, in particular) and much of western Africa; Italy, Germany, Portugal and Spain controlled little portions of most of the rest of Africa; the Netherlands controlled large areas in southeast Asia (particularly Indonesia); and Belgium controlled the Congo, a vast, resource rich (ivory and rubber, in particular) territory in the southern middle of Africa. The European colonial control of much of the underdeveloped world persisted (more or less) until the end of the second world war—and sometimes after—ending quietly in places like Canada and Australia, a little less quietlyin places like India/Pakistan, and chaotically and violently in places Algeria, Palestine and Vietnam.
The colonization of the Congo by King Leopold of Belgium is what is specifically important for our reading of Heart of Darkness. The colonization of the Congo began in 1885 and ran until 1908, and is now infamous for the brutal way in which the colony was administered. Oddly, during the period from 1885 to 1908, the Belgian Congo not a possession of the Belgian government, but was, rather, a personal possession of King Leopold. Increasingly during that period, King Leopold was under intense pressure from several quarters to answer for the brutality that existed in the Belgian Congo. Journalists and writers such as Conrad, Mark Twain and Arthur Conan Doyle, andother European governments, including the British government, pressured the King to relinquish his control of the colony and to turn that control over to the Belgian government. The British government even went so far as to claim that Leopold had run afoul of the Berlin Act—an act which required signatory countries to watch over the moral and material comfort of the native population. Both Britain and the Belgium were signatories.
The colonization of the Congo, then, is important for our purposes in the following ways:
First, the Congo Free State was, as mentioned above,not a Belgian colony—that is to say, it was not the possession of the Belgian government, but was rather a personal, corporate possession of the King Leopold. This meant that any profits made in the Belgian Congo in the late 19th century and early 20thcentury (and there were lots and lots of profits made in the Belgian Congo) did not go to the Belgian government, but instead went directly to the King.
Having said that, Leopold was still the king of the Belgian people and still interested in using some of the wealth he gained from his personal estate in Africa to “help” Belgium. As a result, the “Builder-King,” as he is sometimes called, spent large amounts of the money made from the extraordinarily lucrative African ivory and rubber trade on the beautification of Belgium, most notably in Brussels and in the other major Belgian cities. The wealth he gained from his personal estate in Africa thus helped finance (ironically, in a way) many “civilizing” projects in Belgian, such as the opera, and the building of museums, public squares, parks, statues, etc. In essence, he used the money he gained from the so-called ‘dark continent’ to make Brussels as “civilized” as possible (hence an explanation for some of Conrad’s dark/light imagery used in Heart of Darkness).
The fact that Leopold personally controlled the Congo Free State also meant that he could divide up the colony any way he saw fit. This meant that he could portion his colony out to various companies who wanted a piece of the action (so to speak). As a result, he could charge these companies for the right to operate in Africa, which meant money for him, and he could require them to pay him a portion of their profits to him, which also meant money for him.
The fact that Leopold personally controlled the Congo Free State also meant that there was very little oversight or governmental administration—either bureaucratic or military—in the Congo Free State. The Belgian government was not really interested in spending money or (one would assume) spending political capital on a region that their King already controlled. The lack of administrative control or oversight, combined with other factors such as the lack of media and media technology, the edge of the known-world feel of the place, and the massive profits coming out of the Congo Free State, meant that there was very little control over the people and the companies that did business in the Congo. This lack of control turned out to have very dire consequences in the Congo (more on that in a moment).
Second, like with most colonial projects, once Leopold gained some measure of control over the Congo in 1885, he felt the need to justify his desire to control another people’s land. Famously, his justifications were threefold: 1) by gaining control of the Congo, the King could bring “civilization” to the Congolese/African tribes who had, in the view of the Victorian Era Europe, suffered far too long and far too brutally with their “primitive” existence; 2) (and it is essentially impossible to untangle this reason from reason #1) by colonizing the Congo, the King was going bring the light of Christianity to the Congolese/African tribes, and thus save them from an eternity of darkness (another reason for all the light/dark imagery in Heart of Darkness); and 3) by colonizing the Congo, the King claimed he was going to put an end to the central and eastern African slave trade (this is a local and tribal slave trade that is separate from the slave trade that fed the massive African slavery found in the Americas up until 1865), the ending of which being a noble mission for any civilized, Christian society to undertake.
Third, the period of King Leopold’s control of the Congo is now legendary (infamous) for the wholesale death that his control visited upon the Congo and the Congolese people and for the shocking brutality of the forced labor (essentially slavery) system that was used to subjugate and control the native population while Belgian companies did business in the Congo Free State. Estimates of the number of Congolese that died during the period in which Leopold controlled the Congo range from five million to 20 million. This number includes death from poverty, hunger and disease that was a result of Belgian control of the Congo.
Fourth, Conrad himself, much like Marlow in the novel, worked in the Congo on a steamer that went up the Congo River—and so Conrad knewfirsthand what was going on in the Congo. Also, he is reported to have encountered and heard stories about several Kurtz-like figures and to have combined them to make his Kurtz.